156' 
politicks of the nation, but also the principles of 
Art, to such a deep and inveterate extent, that the 
morality of painting is not yet either felt or un- 
derstood in that country. In the mechanical exe- 
cution, in drawing, and in the arrangement of 
parts, the great French painters are probably 
equal to the Italians; but in producing any other 
sentiment in the spectator than that of admira- 
tion at 
behind 
their mechanical skill, 
the English. Painting 
they are greatly 
has much of a 
common character with dramatick literature, and 
the very best pictures of the French Artists have 
the same kind of resemblance to the probability 
of Nature, that the tragedies of their great 
dramatick authors have to the characters and 
actions of men. But in rejecting the pretensions of 
the French to superiority either in the one species 
of art or in the other, the rejection ought not to 
be extended too far. They are wrong in their 
theory; but their practice so admirably accords 
with it, that it must be allowed, were it possible 
for a people so enchanted by self-conceit, to dis- 
cover, that the true subjects of Art exist only in 
Nature, they evince a capacity sufiicient to enable